Best brand HD?

[SFSecurity]

My T61 is running out of space and I need a new, larger HD. I used a Hitachi once before and it c$%^ed out in less than a year.

What is currently a good replacement drive for the T61? Does not have to be huge and I don't want to use the DVD slot so I'm stuck with ATA. 120 GB would work but a bit bigger would be better, say 180 GB. I worry about getting too big in a laptop as they seem to fail sooner.

Thanks,

Allen

[Cigarguy]

Unfortunately there's not a lot to choose from these days. Seagate, WD or possibly Toshiba. I like Hitachi drives but not so certain now that WD have bought them. My understanding is Toshiba have got the tech from WD for Hitachi drives. I don't particularly care for Seagate. A lot of folks like Samsung which is now owned by Seagate. Any HDD/SSD can fail at any time due to various and numerous variables; operating temp, operating condition, shock, user, etc. I don't think anyone can say series X from brand Y is prone to always fail. Personal preferences and confidence have a lot to do with HDD purchases.

Back up is key.

I have two T61 with a SSD in each. I have a 1 TB Hitachi installed via an Ultrabay adapter that is swapped into whatever system I'm using at the time. When shopping for SSDs and HDDs, price is my biggest factor. Everything is backed up and I expect it to fail.

[ZaZ]

For hard drives I vote for WD. I don't think they're any better than others, but they have the best replacement policy. If your drive fails and you give them your credit card number, they'll ship one right away. As long as you return it within 30 days, they won't charge you. Most other drive manufacturers require you send the old drive in before getting a replacement, which lengthens the time you're without a drive from a few days to a couple weeks.

I don't know what you're looking to spend, but if you don't need much space, a SSD might be worth a look. There has been pretty good deals of late on them. I just picked up a 120GB OCZ SSD for my desktop for $65, after rebate of course. A SSD will offer much better performance than a standard drive.

[pianowizard]

What is currently a good replacement drive for the T61? Does not have to be huge and I don't want to use the DVD slot so I'm stuck with ATA.

The T61 uses SATA drives, not IDE ATA. Brand doesn't matter much any more. It used to matter in the past, e.g. Maxtor was definitely awful, and for a couple years Seagate also seemed significantly less reliable than others. But right now, all the manufacturers are about the same in terms of quality. I would just go for whatever offers the best balance between price and warranty duration.

My T61 is running out of space and I need a new, larger HD. I used a Hitachi once before and it c$%^ed out in less than a year.

The same has happened to Seagate drives or Western Digital drives. If you come across a good deal on a Hitachi drive, you should still grab it.

[TuuS]

I always liked Hatachi drives, I have some that have run over a decade, but you never can tell with a harddrive, some never die, while others never work right. Anything with so many tiny moving parts has a good chance of failing.

Good Luck

[taichi]

I put a WD Scorpio Black 500GB onto my T60P a couple of years ago and have been very, very pleased.

[Wind]

Interesting-I bought WD Scorpio Black for my T60, some 3 years ago. It made big, heavy dining table to vibrate-took it back, they replaced with other (both brand new)-the same...took it back and bought Toshiba. WD Scorpio Black...never again for me

[zemlin]

Any device can fail. By a reputable brand with a good warranty, backup often, and keep your fingers crossed.

[miro_gt]

Interesting-I bought WD Scorpio Black for my T60, some 3 years ago. It made big, heavy dining table to vibrate-took it back, they replaced with other (both brand new)-the same...took it back and bought Toshiba. WD Scorpio Black...never again for me

It made a your "big heavy dining table" to vibrate ?!?!!?! ... LOL

I have three WD black 500GB and cant say a bad thing about those. But I think small SSD would do wonders in your case.

[SFSecurity]

The T61 uses SATA drives, not IDE ATA. Brand doesn't matter much any more. It used to matter in the past, e.g. Maxtor was definitely awful, and for a couple years Seagate also seemed significantly less reliable than others. But right now, all the manufacturers are about the same in terms of quality. I would just go for whatever offers the best balance between price and warranty duration.

Didn't realize that. Haven't attacked it with my screwdriver yet.

My T61 is running out of space and I need a new, larger HD. I used a Hitachi once before and it c$%^ed out in less than a year.

The funny thing is that at about the same time my Hitachi hit the wall a client's did it too, but only after a month. I was told, at the time, that Hitachi and the original T40 HD used a slightly different mechanism from Seagate/WD. I've used both of them for years and had one WD fail in a USB external drive - can't find it to get it replaced after moving/divorce, alas - but other than that they have been good to me. You should see the box of older drives.

The same has happened to Seagate drives or Western Digital drives. If you come across a good deal on a Hitachi drive, you should still grab it.

I have tended to avoid SSDs because of my understanding of their "wearing" out if you compact too often. I don't do it religiously but I tend to do it every couple of months as I am constantly loading software to test out and then removing it, leaving a drive very fragmented, often in the 20-25% range. Would this be an issue with SSDs?

Thanks,

Allen

[Cigarguy]

I have tended to avoid SSDs because of my understanding of their "wearing" out if you compact too often. I don't do it religiously but I tend to do it every couple of months as I am constantly loading software to test out and then removing it, leaving a drive very fragmented, often in the 20-25% range. Would this be an issue with SSDs?

Thanks,

Allen

SSD have come a long way over the past few years. Win 7 have helped too.

SSD don't suffer from framentation problem as a spinning platter disk would. Flash memory work quite differently than HDD in the way data is accessed. SSDs have TRIM and garbage collection which function similar to defrag on a HDD. TRIM and garbage collection are done quietly in the background without user interaction.

As for durability. All things being equal, I expect my SSDs to outlast the system that it is currently running. After trying SSD for the first time a couple of years ago, I'm just one of the many who will NEVER go back to HDD for OS and program load.

[cadillacmike68]

For hard drives I vote for WD. I don't think they're any better than others, but they have the best replacement policy. If your drive fails and you give them your credit card number, they'll ship one right away. As long as you return it within 30 days, they won't charge you. Most other drive manufacturers require you send the old drive in before getting a replacement, which lengthens the time you're without a drive from a few days to a couple weeks.

I don't know what you're looking to spend, but if you don't need much space, a SSD might be worth a look. There has been pretty good deals of late on them. I just picked up a 120GB OCZ SSD for my desktop for $65, after rebate of course. A SSD will offer much better performance than a standard drive.

I recommend keeping a spare HDD cloned and refreshed periodically. I backup by actually copying to another HDD. Being back in the desert means i have to keep spares of memory, WIFI, HDD, DVD & even the power supply, because I'm 7,000 mi from home, and the boss lady is not overly familiar with all my spare parts back home.

As for drive brands, way back i liked Seagate. I still have a few old drives, and i'll bet they still work. Then later i liked Hitachis, they actually were spun off of IBMs far east data storage division for PCs. I have some old IBM SCSI desktop drives, that still work, but they are so low in capacity compared to newer drives. WDs, well I was wary, but the 6 or so i have have been trouble free for several years. I still like to run Hitachi's in the T30s and T61, but you can't really find them over 120GB in PATA (ATA / IDE), whereas you can find WD PATAs in 320GB.

[khaverblad]

Running with a Intel X25 SSD 80GB as system drive that I bought 2.5yr ago; running great and without issues; best hardware upgrade ever! Then using a WD 320GB Black drive as secondary drive mounted using an ultrabay adapter as I don't make use of the DVD drive any more or very seldom. Bought a slim case usb kit on eBay so that I have it available when needed.

[taichi]

Interesting-I bought WD Scorpio Black for my T60, some 3 years ago. It made big, heavy dining table to vibrate-took it back, they replaced with other (both brand new)-the same...took it back and bought Toshiba. WD Scorpio Black...never again for me

I know many people who own the Scorpio Black500GB 7200 RPM drive, and are extremely happy with it. Mine is much quieter than the Hitachi Travelstar that it replaced. The fan, which is rather quiet, makes more noise than the Scorpio Black.

I'm only speaking of the newest 500 GB version of the Scorpio Black. The newer version is superior to the old one.

[taichi]

I recommend keeping a spare HDD cloned and refreshed periodically. I backup by actually copying to another HDD. Being back in the desert means i have to keep spares of memory, WIFI, HDD, DVD & even the power supply, because I'm 7,000 mi from home, and the boss lady is not overly familiar with all my spare parts back home.

Do you clone by putting the old drive in an external enclosure, and copying to the new, internal target drive?

I was able to clone from the internal drive of my A21p to an external Apricorn enclosure without any problem, but apparently the T60P bars you from doing that.

[ThinkRob]

I've never seen any data indicating a statistically significant difference in failure rates amongst the various brands.

I *have* seen data indicating a lack thereof.

I'd purchase based on warranty term and quality of support before I would brand.

[cadillacmike68]

I recommend keeping a spare HDD cloned and refreshed periodically. I backup by actually copying to another HDD. Being back in the desert means i have to keep spares of memory, WIFI, HDD, DVD & even the power supply, because I'm 7,000 mi from home, and the boss lady is not overly familiar with all my spare parts back home.

Do you clone by putting the old drive in an external enclosure, and copying to the new, internal target drive?

I was able to clone from the internal drive of my A21p to an external Apricorn enclosure without any problem, but apparently the T60P bars you from doing that.

I use Acronis TI 11

Before i got my advanced dock and full dock IIs, I would clone from within windows, with the original drive in the original (main) bay and the target in the Ultrabay. As long as you power off at the end instead of rebooting it works.

When I got the docks with the extra Ultrabay, I still leave the disks the same way but I put the bootable Acronis CD in the dock's Ultrabay and boot the CD. It's cleaner, faster, more reliable and easier.

I got to be pretty good at it because of a masked issue with the T30s max boot disk size. I'll be starting up again with T61s, but with no advanced dock out here it'll be a windows operation.

Enclosures work but you have to put the source in the enclosure, NOT the target. The Boot CD goes in the ultrabay.